Love Letter
by Martin III
Summary: Preparing to go home one day, Kyon finds Haruhi going through his shoe locker. The object of her search could change their relationship forever. Or not? (A White Day-themed fic in three parts, one to be published on Valentine's Day, one on White Day, and one on a day in between. Update 3/24/20: Now with an epilogue.)
1. Chapter 1

**Author's notes:** This idea started out so simple and obvious that I didn't think anyone would be interested in reading it. Then, despite my having consciously abandoned it, the idea kept growing in complexity. For a time I considered incorporating it into a larger fic, and I went through several endings that wouldn't have been quite right for the characters before settling on this one. Hopefully this baby boy has come out of its growing pains to emerge as a full grown man of a story.

For some behind-the-scenes info and photos on the making of this story, check out "Letter Found in Kyon's Shoe Locker" on DeviantArt – but not until you've read the story itself, as there are spoilers.

The characters and milieu of this fan fiction work are property of Nagaru Tanigawa, Kyoto Animation, and Funimation, with the exception of Takuma, who is my creation (read "Haruhi's Boyfriend" for his background).

* * *

\- Chapter 1 -

School was over, and I'd survived an exceptionally tedious SOS Brigade meeting (Haruhi made us pore over photos of supposed poltergeist activity and identify which ones were probably fake and which might be worth investigating), so I was walking down the hall towards my shoe locker so that I could finally head home. My numbed mind wasn't ready to process the sight of Haruhi sprinting past me at a speed that would have won any track meet I'd ever seen.

Even so, I got the immediate impression that something was not right. Not even Haruhi would go running around without a purpose in mind, and there was no purpose I knew of that would explain her hyperactivity. Besides, going by the way she recklessly shot down the hall, disappearing around the corner within two seconds of my laying eyes on her, her state of mind seemed to be not excitement, but panic. These weren't points that I needed to analyze or deduce. They were obvious enough that even my wearied mind saw them immediately.

That was why I increased my own pace from a worn-out lurching to a hurried stride. If this were a race, at her speed Haruhi would have lapped me multiple times before it was over, but if her objective was nearby I just might arrive in time to witness what was going on.

I cut around the corner just in time to see the locker room door slam shut. Striding to it in four seconds, I pulled it open and spotted Haruhi. To my dismay, she was opening someone's locker.

Mine.

"Hey," I called, increasing my speed again, to a half-jog.

She didn't seem to hear me. Her eyes were fixed, like those of a hunter upon a deer, on the inside of my shoe locker as she rooted around. In a moment, she had laid hands upon an envelope.

Given the nature of some of the messages people have left in my shoe locker since I first came to North High, I think you'll understand why my alarm increased tenfold at this point.

"Hey!" My heart was pounding as I streaked towards my shoe locker. "Haruhi!"

She gripped the envelope in her hands and began to tear it up. One torn piece, then two, fell at her feet. Her whole being seemed directed towards the destruction of this message. That's the only explanation I can think of for how I managed to reach her and snatch away the remaining piece.

"Hey!" She seemed startled by my presence. "Give that back!"

Only Haruhi could talk as though a message left in my shoe locker were her personal property. I put it in the pocket of my blazer and firmly planted a foot on the two pieces lying on the floor. "It was in _my_ locker," I told her. "That means it's for me."

"Either give it back to me or destroy it. That's an order from your brigade chief!"

_The fact that you're so eager to destroy it only makes me all the more determined to see what it says._

"I'm not fooling around, Kyon! Give it to me!"

Her hand shot out and took hold of the envelope in my pocket. I seized her wrist to prevent her from pulling it out, but the momentum of her grab was enough to yank me off balance, and together we tumbled to the floor, struggling for possession of the mysterious letter.

Wrestling like this was becoming something of a frequent activity for Haruhi and me. Koizumi said it was our way of getting release from our assorted stress. I can't speak for Haruhi, but obviously such pop psychology was nonsense as applied to me, because Haruhi was always the aggressor in these struggles. Even in Haruhi's case, a more practical explanation would more than suffice, because she always had something she was fighting for. And she always got it.

But this time was different. This time, what we were fighting over could well be a message from the elder Miss Asahina with instructions that must be followed to preserve the entire future. Or any number of things of similar gravity. The point was, this time I had something to really fight for, and that was enough to give me strength I didn't know I had. I'd be damned if I was going to let time and space collapse into so much rubble. Even if Haruhi Suzumiya was my opponent, I intended to struggle, to the last breath if need be, and win.

...Oh, hell. You all know how this ends. It ends with me on my stomach, breathing the filth of the locker room floor, one arm locked behind my back, and Haruhi squatting on top of me as she tears the message into confetti.

Laying there, I struggled to decide which was more humiliating: That with the fate of the world potentially at stake, I had been physically overpowered by a girl a head shorter than me, or that during our little wrestling match I had developed an erection. I could only pray that Haruhi hadn't noticed it.

Haruhi tossed the last of the letter to the floor. "Trust me, Kyon, this is for your own good."

_My bruises beg to differ._

She got off of me and walked off, leaving me in the dirt without a word. And without my dignity.

There was only one thing for me to do: Get up on my hands and knees and pick up the shredded pieces of the letter, in the hopes that I might be able to piece them together. I'm sure I made a pretty pathetic sight, groveling about on the locker room floor, picking up shredded scraps of paper one by one, but whatever was written on that letter was potentially too important. Besides, no one was there to witness my shame. Thank heaven for small favors.

Actually, there was _one_ person to witness it. As I was nearing the end of my task, I heard a voice remark, "Seriously?"

I froze. There was Haruhi, standing at the entrance of the locker room, arms folded. Don't ask me why she came back. Your guess is as good as mine. Her hair and clothes were disheveled from our struggle, but she still looked like an empress surveying a poorly set banquet table. More to the point, she wouldn't spare a second thought to confiscating the bits of letter that I'd gathered, stuffing my feet into my own shoe locker, and leaving me there overnight as punishment for my obstinacy.

Instead, she snorted with disdain. "Fine. If you're willing to grovel in the dirt for that stupid letter, then go ahead and read it. You're going to be _so_ confused when you do. I can't wait to see the look on your stupid face tomorrow morning."

She flicked some of the strands of hair out of her face, then turned and left.

_Well, that was weird. She talked like she already knew exactly what the letter says. But how could she know that without getting her hands on it? And if she did get her hands on it, why didn't she tear it up then, before it got delivered to my shoe locker?_

I didn't let that little enigma delay me. I gathered up the rest of the pieces of the letter, or at least all the pieces that I could spot, and stuffed them in my pocket.

Then I changed into my shoes and headed home, keeping a hand in my pocket all the while to keep the pieces from flying out. It was a long walk, speculations of who wrote the letter and what it said dogging me all the way. I'd never realized before what a blessing it was to be able to read the notes left in my shoe locker right there, or at least in the bathroom. Instant gratification is a mercy that should never be taken for granted.

When I got home, I carefully laid out the pieces of note on my desk. An involuntary sigh sent a half dozen of them blowing across the room, costing me a few more minutes of delay as I cursed myself out and hunted them down all over my floor. Then I took out the transparent tape and got to work.

I'm actually reasonably fond of jigsaw puzzles, enough to wish Koizumi might bring one in now and then. But any jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't lock together on their own, and scatter like snowflakes in a storm at any stray breath, is a pretty crummy jigsaw puzzle in my book. Certainly a pain in the ass to assemble. Haruhi had torn it up but good.

Still, there was one thing I had to be immediately thankful for: Whoever wrote the letter had only written on one side of each page. I can only imagine how long it would have taken me to piece it together if I had to repeatedly check both sides of every scrap. As it was, I just set aside all the pieces that were blank, lay the remaining pieces writing-side-up, and from there it was the same principle as a regular puzzle.

As I did this, I found that as much as Haruhi had torn the letter up, there were still some pieces with complete words intact. For example, one piece had "okay?" with "up!" on the line below it. Another had "I expect". More suggestively, one piece had "all" on one line and "love" on the line below.

But the biggest clue so far, and the most mystifying one, was the handwriting. I had no trouble recognizing it; I'd seen it more than enough times on armbands and banners to know it better than my own. It was Haruhi's.

Easy enough to guess that she'd written me something and had second thoughts about it, but I still wanted to know what exactly it was. I kept on piecing together a word here, a word there, while stringing together edge pieces and pieces which shared the left margin line. It was slow going, and it was frustratingly long before I managed to assemble an actual sentence. By attaching a right edge piece with one line that seemed to complete the word "about" and another line with a "like" that seemed to naturally precede "a book", I got two complete sentences in one go. They were: "I'm pretty sure you feel the same way about me. You try to hide it, but I can read you like a book."

Somewhat concerning, given that by this point I'd spotted three instances of the word "love". But I pressed on.

I took a break for dinner, but other than that I worked straight through, late into the night. My eyes felt like raisins, and I didn't get a bit of homework done, but the mystery of what Haruhi might have written had a grip on me. And I wasn't going to face her tomorrow morning and tell her I couldn't undo her note-shredding.

Once I found the opening sentences of the note, my progress sped up, as it was usually pretty easy to guess which word came next in each sentence, so I could look for the right characters as well as the right shape. Even so, it was impossible to say what this note was getting at without being able to read the whole thing. The truth is, even when I was finished assembling the entire note, I couldn't say I was particularly enlightened. In fact...

I should have trusted Haruhi. She'd told me the perfect truth: Tearing up the letter had been for my own good.

Thanks to my not-quite-perfect alignment of the pieces, the reassembled note was all warped into hills and valleys, with some pieces overlapping others, but I'm pretty sure it read:

_Hey Kyon. I don't know what possessed me to write this. I'll probably think better of it and tear this up before you can read it. Even if you do read it, I'm sure I'll deny writing it. You probably wouldn't believe I wrote it, anyway; there are at least fifty people who would write this as a prank on us. But I just have to get this off my chest, and I can't bring myself to say it to your face._

_ I think I'm in love with you. I'm not sure that's exactly what it is, because it's a lot different than I'd heard it would be, but at the same time, it's too similar to love to call it anything else. Someone needs to come up with a new word for this feeling. See, I'm happy when you're around, usually, but if there's something that's making me sad or angry, I don't become happy just from seeing you. I can be sad or angry when I'm with you. And I'm not sad when you're not around__ – __even when I'm not with you, I'm much happier than I was before I met you._

_ Another thing that's different. For a while now, we've been playing this game where I act jealous and suspicious, like when you and Mikuru went on that secret outing, but the truth is, I know you'd never cheat on me. You've got a wandering eye but a faithful heart._

_ Do you get the idea? It's like I've got all the good stuff that comes with being in love and none of the bad stuff. So it's not a problem._

_ I'm pretty sure you feel the same way about me. You try to hide it, but I can read you like a book. Don't worry__ – __I won't tell anyone, and you don't have to tell me, though I wouldn't mind if you did. Maybe you'd find it easier to do by letter, too._

_ There is something I need you to do for me, though. It's something you should have no problem with doing even if you think I didn't write this letter. When you make your White Day presents, use icing to write "partner" on mine. It won't mean anything to anyone else, but when I see you wrote it I'll know that I'm special to you the way you're special to me. That's important to me, okay?_

_ And don't do anything to screw this up! Joking aside, I'm a one-man woman and I expect you to be a one-woman man. Also, don't embar__r__ass me by saying lovey-dovey stuff in front of anyone else. Anything like that, you can say to me in private. And keep on being supportive and understanding, like you have been._

_ Seriously, don't screw this up. Like I said, I don't know what it is that's between us, but it's better than true love. It's unique, and exciting, and it makes me feel like you and I could take on all the world's problems and blast them into space dust. I'm not letting it go. I'm trusting you to not let it go either._

_\- Haruhi_

I just stared at the letter for a while. Yeah, I was confused.

There's no way Haruhi would have written this. I knew her well, so I knew she wasn't in love with me.

Don't misunderstand. Her changing her mind about destroying the world when I kissed her, her keeping her photos of us dating, and any number of other things suggested that Haruhi had some sort of romantic inclination towards me. But I don't buy into love at first sight and all that other crap. There's a whole spectrum of romantic feelings you can have, and the difference between the feelings Haruhi had shown for me and the feelings that would make a girl give a boy a letter professing her love is as big as the difference between a faded yellow and a fiery red. If her feelings for me had become that strong, there are a thousand things she'd have done differently. She wouldn't have broken up with me and started dating Takuma. She wouldn't have made a joke out of my secret meeting with Miss Asahina. She would have thanked me at least once for the countless tasks I'd undertaken on her behalf.

On top of that, if she _were_ in love with me (a pretty messed up prospect, given our relationship), she would have written a love letter before. She certainly wouldn't have given it to me now, of all times. Just a few days ago she got pissed at me because I'd failed to properly investigate her helping out that bespectacled kid with his studies, and so far as I could tell she was still pissed. Actually, pissed isn't the right word. She was disillusioned, which was worse. I just couldn't see her feeling the urge to confess love to me right now.

But. The letter was unmistakably in Haruhi's handwriting. The tone was also distinctly Haruhi-esqe. And if Haruhi wrote it, that would certainly explain the contradiction of her knowing what it said and not having immediately destroyed it. I couldn't think of another explanation for that.

So, what the hell?

* * *

I continued to muddle over that question all evening, and hadn't found any answer by the following morning.

Was this her bad idea of a joke that she realized was a bad idea of a joke at the last minute? If so, what was supposed to be funny about it? The only thing it directed me to do was write "partner" (crap, that's not a reference to the things we said to each other in that private detectives universe, is it?) on one of her White Day presents, and that would hardly make me look like a fool. Heck, she could have just told me to do that straight up, as an order from my brigade chief. She didn't need to pretend to be in love with me to get me to do that. Doing things for Haruhi that make me look stupid could be my job description, except I'm not getting paid.

Haruhi was looking out the window when I got to class that morning. I got the sense that she was doing so to avoid looking at me. She didn't say anything when I took my seat.

I wanted to know what the deal with that letter was. I was dying to know. But I also felt like I'd rather die than know. Yeah, it definitely would have been better if I'd just left it in pieces on the locker room floor. But what was done was done, and now the agony of not knowing was worse than any agony that knowing could dish out, or so I thought.

So I steeled my nerve, turned around in my seat, and said to the girl behind me, "So..." And struggled to come up with anything to say beyond that.

"I didn't write it."

_I'd certainly like to believe that, but then who did? And how did you know about it?_

"Takuma approached me as I left the clubroom." She still wasn't looking at me. "He told me he put a love letter in your shoe locker and signed it with my name. Then I think he laughed and said you were probably reading it even as he spoke. I didn't hear him too well because I was already running towards the locker room."

_Takuma? __The drummer of our short-lived band who looks like a perverted chimpanzee and thinks like one too? __He__ wrote this?_

"I guess this was his revenge for my dumping him. Totally despicable. We'll have to come up with something to teach him a lesson."

Nope, not buying it. At a stretch, I could imagine Takuma pulling off such a good counterfeit of Haruhi's handwriting. There are also some far-fetched explanations for how he might know about my secret outing with Miss Asahina, and Haruhi's reaction to it.

But one thing really made it impossible that Takuma had written the letter: The author of the letter had confessed her love, but she hadn't surrendered her dignity. If Takuma had forged this in an act of revenge, it would have been full of romantic desperation, whimpering sentimentality, and promises to perform degrading sexual acts for my benefit.

In fact, in that respect this was a better love letter than any I could have imagined. TV shows, video games, and the few love letters I'd seen in real life (none of which were written to me, until this one) had all given me the impression that love letters were full of flattery and needy statements like "I'll die without your love", which were either dishonest or just embarrassing, and put a heck of a lot of emotional pressure on the recipient. This letter expressed the writer's feelings honestly, without exaggerations. It said one or two nice things about me, but it wasn't groveling for my affections. In fact, it assumed them, which was damn presumptuous, but if I didn't like this person the way the letter thought I did, then no love letter coming from them could be a good one anyway.

The point was, if Takuma were trying to embarrass Haruhi, he wouldn't write a letter like this.

I'm not saying Haruhi was lying. I didn't believe she wrote the letter to begin with. What I'm saying is, if it wasn't Haruhi who wrote it, it had to be someone who wasn't out to embarrass Haruhi, who was a damn good forger, who knew Haruhi inside and out, and probably had knowledge of what went on at SOS Brigade meetings...

...I'm an idiot.

How did I not see this sooner? Like, the instant I read the letter?

"What is it?" Haruhi was looking at me with interest.

"Nothing." I turned back to face the front of the class.

"No, you just figured something out. Come on, share it."

_No use playing dumb. Haruhi's too perceptive. Have to misdirect her._ "I thought of a way we could get back at Takuma, but it's a stupid idea."

"It probably is. So what is it?"

_What, just so you can deride me?_ "I'm not saying."

"As usual," she grumbled.

I hung in there until lunch break. It was hard to concentrate on the lectures, as I was feeling increasingly angry over the letter. Someone had set me and Haruhi up like fools, and I had a pretty good suspicion of who.


	2. Chapter 2

\- Chapter 2 -

When the lunch bell sounded, I practically sprinted to Koizumi's classroom. Well, something like that. Let's just say I was fast enough to catch him as he headed out the door and towards the cafeteria.

"Kyon," he called to me, raising his hand in a half-wave, half-salute. "Come to join me for lunch?"

"I'd rather we had this out right here."

"As you like. I gather that there's a problem?"

"I'm not in the mood to play games, Koizumi. Yesterday I found a letter in my shoe locker. Did you write it?"

His jovial manner was unfazed. "If I did, I'm sure I would have signed it."

"You did. With Haruhi's name."

Koizumi framed his jaw with his thumb and forefinger. "Then what is it that makes you think she isn't the one who wrote it?"

"First of all, it's a love letter."

"An unlikely choice of missive for her, I'll admit, but not impossible."

"Second, she told me herself that she didn't write it."

Koizumi smiled. "Ah yes, your unwavering trust in your lady love. But revealing one's inner feelings can be so embarrassing. If Miss Suzumiya wrote such a letter, and had second thoughts about it, might she not then lie about it, even to you? No, never mind," he said, holding his hands up to ward off my furious glare. "You didn't ask me who wrote the letter; you asked if I wrote it, and I can see you're not interested in the possibility of Miss Suzumiya having written it. Very well. I am a bit hurt, though, that you think I would pull a prank centering on Miss Suzumiya's feelings. That would be most juvenile, and extremely risky as well."

"I wasn't thinking it was a prank. I was thinking you were trying to play cupid."

"That is even more insulting. I know I jest quite often about you and Miss Suzumiya, but you don't think I'm really so blind as to think either of you is ready for that phase in your relationship? You not believing she would write such a letter, and she categorically denying having written it, are just the reactions I would have expected."

He did have a point there. Koizumi may have been a jerk, but he wasn't stupid. Still, I didn't like the way he wasn't giving me a straight answer. "Yes or no. Did you or one of your 'comrades' write that letter?"

"No, unless it was done by a rogue. A possibility I'll be sure to look into. May I have a look at the letter?"

"I don't have it with me." Hopelessly warped and held together with transparent tape as it was, I couldn't see it holding together more than five minutes inside my bookbag.

"If you could bring it in tomorrow, that would be most helpful. I'm sure I can narrow down the possible authors much more effectively after seeing the work itself."

"I have a better idea. Come over my house this evening, and I'll show it to you there."

"You're very eager to have this resolved, aren't you?" He shrugged. "Well, that's fine with me. We need to finalize our White Day preparations, anyway. May I suggest you speak to Misses Nagato and Asahina as well?"

"Neither of them would ever write something like this."

"Agreed, but another humanoid interface or time traveler might, and if one did, they would likely know about it."

_I guess that makes sense, even if he is probably just trying to redirect suspicion._ "I'll invite them over too, then. But I think I'll see what Takuma knows first."

"Takuma? Why would he know anything?"

It was refreshing to have Koizumi asking me for information for a change. "He told Haruhi he wrote the letter."

He scratched the side of his forehead with one finger. "Then what makes you think -"

"Excuse me, but I've got to get this done before lunch break is over." I said this as politely as I could, but I can't deny it was satisfying to walk away with Koizumi looking at me with a quizzical expression.

* * *

When I walked into Takuma's classroom, he was having lunch with two cohorts, both almost as disgusting-looking as him. I immediately regretted not bringing Koizumi along for support.

Actually, it was probably best I didn't antagonize Takuma too much anyway. Haruhi might want him as drummer again when the time came around for the cultural festival. And as loathsome as Takuma was, I liked the ideas of Haruhi poaching some other band's drummer or putting Koizumi in front of a pilfered drum kit even less.

"Hey, Kyon," he greeted me, perfectly casual. "What's up?"

"I want you to answer me a question. Who wrote that letter?" I demanded.

He blinked. "What letter?"

His two friends were already smirking at me. Being in a club run by Haruhi Suzumiya doesn't do much for your reputation.

I leaned in close and lowered my voice; I didn't care to let the whole school know what was going on. People could come to wrong interpretations. "The love letter in my shoe locker. Haruhi told me about how you told her you wrote it."

"And you believed her?" Takuma's widened eyes and grin made him look even more chimp-like than usual. "Dude, that girl is nuts about you. We're talking batshit crazy. The whole time I was dating her, all she would talk about was you. Every other word she said was about how much smarter you are than me, how much more considerate, yadda yadda yadda. Do you know why we broke up? Because when I tried to touch her boobs, she said no one but you could touch her. If you got a love letter, Suzumiya's the one who wrote it."

I let my eyelids droop as I looked down at him. "You're the worst liar I've ever heard."

Actually, his delivery was pretty convincing. It was the lies themselves that were weak. Even if she were in love, Haruhi would never say things like that. Especially not to Takuma. She might have been dumb enough to make him her boyfriend, but she'd never have been dumb enough to make him her confidant.

"Look," I said. "You've had your little laugh at Haruhi's expense. And I'm not buying your story, because I know for a fact that someone else forged that letter and told you about it. They probably had you stick it in my shoe locker for them. So you have nothing to lose by telling me the truth. Who was it?"

"Why?" one of Takuma's friends chimed in. "Is the forger a secret government agent?"

The other one held a hand to the side of his mouth in the manner of someone whispering a secret. "Yeah, the SOS Brigade found a secret government lab where they're experimenting on aliens, and the government's trying to cover it up by sending them fake love letters."

All three of them started laughing their heads off. I guess I did walk right into that one.

I slouched away in defeat. Takuma obviously wasn't going to come clean, at least not in front of his friends, and even if he were going to answer my question I'd have to wait for his laughter to die down first.

Takuma probably didn't know much, anyway. Anyone who did such an excellent forgery of Haruhi's writing wouldn't have given their real name, rank, and serial number to him. And I had other people to visit.

* * *

As I expected, Miss Asahina was having lunch with Tsuruya and her other friends, so it wasn't a good time to talk to her. That left Nagato who, also as I expected, was in the clubroom reading.

"Hey," I greeted.

She gave me no acknowledgment as I approached. Getting closer, I saw that the book in her hands was a text on computer programming.

Well, that was odd. "I thought you already knew more about programming than humans have to teach," I said.

She turned a page. "Tetsuya Yanami loaned it to me."

"Yanami? Is he one of the guys in the computer club?"

A nod.

I guess that explained it. Nagato had no need for the information in the book, but she had accepted the loan so as not to be ungracious. I was getting an uneasy feeling. "Do you like him?"

She looked up at me as though asking for clarification.

"I mean..." I scratched the back of my head. "...did you give him something for Valentine's Day? Or didn't, but wish you had?"

"No." She blinked. "Why?"

Argh. It didn't occur to me that Nagato might still not be 100% clear on the nature of Valentine's Day. Haruhi must have given her a full primer on the holiday when they prepared the Valentine's chocolates for Koizumi and me, but maybe that wasn't enough for her to work out the finer points.

Still, there was no question that Nagato understood what love was. One incident in particular had proved that. "Okay, listen," I said. "When Nakagawa's feelings for you turned out to actually be inspired by the image of your boss, you said you were a little disappointed. If Yanami wrote you a confession like Nakagawa did, and it turned out to be false... would you be disappointed?"

I felt a bit silly questioning her about this so much, but I didn't like the idea of Nagato getting romantic with one of the Computer Society guys.

Nagato looked away. "Unknown."

_Damn it._ "What do you mean, unknown? You have to know what your feelings are, so just imagine how you'd feel about that."

"I do not wish to run further simulations of my emotions."

And there was another anomaly of sorts. Nagato had only recently begun expressing personal desires.

Screw this. I was getting nowhere. Maybe I'd learn more if I had a talk with the Computer Society members. I had other things to talk to Nagato about in the few minutes left of lunch break.

I explained to her about the love letter. She sat listening without comment. I finished, "Is it at all possible that a humanoid interface forged the letter?"

"Yes." She looked back to her book. "However, knowledge of this is not contained in open data stores."

"So, what does that mean?"

"It means I can tell you nothing. Either the letter was written by an entity unconnected to the Data Integration Thought Entity, the letter was forged by a minority faction interface who has concealed their actions from the Data Integration Thought Entity, or the letter was forged at the Data Integration Thought Entity's orders and I must lie to you to conceal our involvement." She turned a page. "I may have even forged the letter myself."

"But you always said that you and your faction or whatever have agreed to only observe. You said you didn't want to risk causing a change in Haruhi."

"The consensus may change at any time. Ryoko Asakura spoke truthfully on that point."

_Oh, boy. As if I don't have enough to worry about._ "But _you_ wouldn't act against us. Even if the rest of the humanoid interfaces and everyone else turned against Haruhi, you wouldn't betray her."

"The letter is not necessarily adverse to Haruhi Suzumiya. It may be intended to encourage the progression of her relationship with you."

"And you don't think that would hurt her?"

She looked confused by the question.

"I mean, when someone writes a letter like this to someone, they're taking a big emotional risk. If the person they're writing to doesn't return their feelings, it's painful and humiliating. And if the person who wrote the letter – I mean, the person who the letter is supposedly from, whether or not they really wrote it... If that person doesn't really feel the way the letter says they do, then it's embarrassing even if the person the letter is written to has feelings for them."

"I know," she said. But she still looked puzzled.

I sighed. "All right, what about _your_ feelings? Doesn't the idea of Haruhi and I becoming lovers because of this letter bother you?"

"No."

_Ouch. I can accept that you're not in love with me, Nagato, but couldn't you at least be a LITTLE bit jealous, the way I'm a little bit jealous because of this Yanami guy?_

"Okay," I sighed. "Since you insist, I'll put you on the list of suspects. See you at the brigade meeting."

"I will not be there."

"Huh? ...Don't tell me you're going to be hanging out with the Computer Research Society again."

Nagato was silent.

After a few moments, I realized my mistake. "Okay, Nagato, forget the last thing I said. Are you going to be hanging out with the Computer Research Society while today's SOS Brigade meeting is going on?"

"Yes."

"Why?" A pathetic question, I know, but I couldn't help myself.

"To establish countermeasures against errors such as those which prompted the reconfiguration of worldwide data last December."

Forget it. I'm lost. "Okay. See you at my house this evening, then."

Happening to glance at the clock, I hurried back to see if I could cram in some lunch in what time there was left of break.

* * *

"REVENGE"

That's what the dry erase board said when I walked into the SOS Brigade clubroom. The other members were already present, except Nagato of course. Koizumi was warming himself in front of the space heater. Miss Asahina, already in maid costume, was looking at that word with great worry on her face. And Haruhi, of course, was the one with the marker in hand.

I sighed and sat down at the table. "This is about Takuma writing that note, isn't it."

"You got it!" Haruhi affirmed, and continued to write on the board.

"Note?" Miss Asahina echoed.

"Right. Takuma forged a love letter from me to Kyon. We have to get back at him to restore the honor of the SOS Brigade." It was apparent by now that she was drawing an ugly caricature of Takuma's face.

I should have seen this coming. Ordinarily, Haruhi would have just let the whole thing go, seeing the letter as just a childish prank, beneath her notice. But production of our movie sequel had been put on hold due to my suggesting that this time we really needed something vaguely resembling a firm script, and we were deep enough into winter that even Haruhi could tell that we needed to take a break from karate lessons until the weather warmed up or we found a good indoor location. Yesterday's poltergeist photos activity was a clear indication that the SOS Brigade was faced with its recurring crisis:

Haruhi was bored.

"Okay, first step." Our brigade chief began writing "1) own medicine". I couldn't tell whether her not using Miss Asahina as notetaker was a bad sign or not. "Mikuru, who's the most desperate, socially awkward, total loser girl in the school?"

"Ah, ah..." Miss Asahina just stammered, clearly uncomfortable with answering that question for reasons that should have been obvious to Haruhi.

"We're going to forge a love letter from Takuma to her. Kyon, you write it. You wrote all those stupid lyrics with him for the band, so you're more familiar with his handwriting and writing style than any of us."

_A love letter, from Takuma? I can't even imagine what that would be like. I don't even _want_ to imagine what that would be like._ "Hold on," I cut in. "I'm not sure where you're going with this, but have you given any consideration at all for the girl's feelings?"

"Of course I have." She sniffed in irritation at the interruption. "But then I realized that there's no way any girl could ever fall in love with Takuma, so what's the harm?"

"That's..." _...more or less dead on correct, actually._

"Glad we're on the same page!" she said with a sudden smile, even though I was still sitting with my mouth open, my sentence unfinished. "Now, naturally the girl is going to confront Takuma, either out of curiosity or to tell him off. Even a neanderthal like Takuma should figure out that we're behind it, so we're going to neeeeed..." She stretched the word out as she picked the marker back up and wrote on the board again.

_Let me guess: Blackmail._

Haruhi stepped aside from the dry erase board, which now had written on it "2) blackmail". For a moment I felt pretty smug about having guessed right. Then it struck me that my knowing what Haruhi was thinking was more than a bit frightening. Either legally questionable activity was becoming more of a routine for us than I'd realized, or I was getting really mentally attuned to Haruhi.

"So!" She capped the marker in a dramatic fashion. "We're going to get some good juicy video footage of Takuma, but there's always room for improvement. Kyon, I want you to spend some time learning that video editing software. Your work on our movie was pretty good, but this is going to require different types of effects, like pasting one person's head onto another person's body, and -"

_Good grief. As if I don't have enough on my plate right now._ "Do we really have to go through all this trouble?" I asked, leaning my head back over the back of my chair.

There was a sudden feeling of electricity in the air. "What," Haruhi said, in a deadly tone.

_Uh oh. I was right about her still being pissed about that grocery store encounter._

"The SOS Brigade has been the target of a blatant attack, and you want to _sit around and do nothing?!_" she spat out the words like they were something vile she'd swallowed by mistake.

She was reaching for a chair. I had to talk fast. "What I mean is, can't this wait a couple weeks? I have some important things I need to get done, so I won't be able to give this revenge project my full attention."

"What the hell is so important that you're putting it before SOS Brigade duties?"

"Well, uh..."

Tough question. I obviously couldn't claim to have any schoolwork beyond what Haruhi herself was dealing with. White Day preparations were what was really eating up my free time, but I didn't want to spoil the surprise for Miss Asahina, even if it was technically an obligation so there wasn't much of a surprise to be had. There was also my investigation into the love letter, but letting Haruhi know about that would run the risk of her learning that there are people out there with a professional interest in her emotional state. I'd already used Shamisen as an excuse, and she'd seemed a bit suspicious of that one anyway.

I was about to suggest that my dad needed help with a home improvement project when Haruhi's scowl suddenly melted into a knowing grin. "Oh, so that's it, huh? I forgot that that was coming up."

Maybe she was being vague for Miss Asahina's sake, but it was pretty obvious that she'd realized I was busy with White Day preparations.

Koizumi came to my aid. "Perhaps it would make more sense to postpone our revenge a couple weeks. That way Takuma will be lulled into thinking that we're not going to take action."

"Good idea!" she chirped, and the knowing grin she shot Koizumi's way was much wider than the one she'd given me. Not that that bothered me. "Well, that's all I had planned for today, so let's end the meeting early so that Kyon has plenty of time to do his important things. Mikuru, wipe down the board."

"Y-yes!" she said, catching the eraser Haruhi tossed at her. Don't ask me why Haruhi didn't wipe it down herself, seeing as she was standing right beside it.

"After that, you're bringing me and Yuki back to your place. We've got some redecorating to do."

_Um. If anyone's place needs redecorating, isn't it Nagato's? ...Wait a second, I've actually never been to Miss Asahina's. Is it possible that her place is even barer than Nagato's apartment?_

Speaking of whom... "Um, Haruhi? Nagato went to the Computer Society today."

"Oh, yeah?" She gave a thoughtful nod. "I kinda had a feeling we were a person short today." _Oblivious to everyone but yourself, as usual._ "Well, that's fine. I've been wanting to get a first-hand look at what Yuki does there anyway. We can all head to Mikuru's when she's done."

That meant I wouldn't be able to ask Miss Asahina about the letter until later. Oh well, Koizumi's organization still seemed the most likely ones to be behind this, and the most likely ones to dig up helpful clues if someone else were behind it.

* * *

Koizumi and I discretely separated when we left the school, of course. Less than a minute after we parted ways, I heard a voice behind me call my name.

My _real_ name. Not Kyon.

That was unusual enough to make me turn my head. But the guy approaching me was someone I'd never seen before. He was short, with a haircut that probably looked very proper and militant when it wasn't wet with snow and tossed by the icy breeze. He was wearing a red scarf and glasses with tiny rectangular lenses. And a school blazer, but I couldn't place the school, though I was sure I'd seen the uniform around.

"I want to talk to you," he said as he got close. "About Haruhi Suzumiya."

I grimaced. "Pass," I said, and returned to my normal stride.

He kept pace with me, despite his shorter legs. "You should be taking this situation more seriously," he remonstrated.

"I am," I said, though I wasn't sure which situation he was talking about. "I just don't take _you_ seriously."

"Maybe that's because you don't know who I am."

"I can take a guess. Time traveler, esper, maybe alien. It doesn't make a difference."

"You really flap your mouth like that about those things? What if I were, instead, a government agent investigating the paranormal?"

I didn't dignify that with reply.

"All right, so I'm an esper. But I'm not from the same organization as Itsuki Koizumi."

I kept my eyes forward. "Still not impressed."

"You don't have to be impressed." His voice was turning to a strained whine. "But you should be interested. Are you telling me that you simply trust whatever information Itsuki Koizumi feeds to you? You just got a love letter from Haruhi Suzumiya, and she told you that someone else forged it. Koizumi probably told you that she really did write it, didn't he?"

"What if he did? I know she didn't write it. What Koizumi says doesn't matter."

"Heh. So you're not a total fool." I risked a side glance at him. He was wiping the winter fog from his glasses. "But with your proximity to Miss Suzumiya, you really need information from a source you can trust."

"You're asking me to trust you? You haven't even introduced yourself."

"Goro Mishima." He held out a hand. I didn't take it. "And of course I'm not asking you to trust me, not yet. But like I said, you need information from a source more trustworthy than Itsuki Koizumi."

"I've got other sources." I buried my face in my scarf against the damn biting cold.

"Who? The upperclassman whose body and personality were obviously engineered with future technology to seduce you? The alien whose standards of communication are so different from ours that what she thinks of as love may be what we think of as hate?"

This was trying my patience. "If the point of this conversation is to bring me one step closer to trusting you, you're doing a pretty miserable job."

"The truth is harsh sometimes. But actually, we've gotten away from the point. Right now, I just want you to question what Koizumi has told you. Do you know what espers are capable of?"

"Sure. You can enter Haruhi's closed space and destroy the big blue giants who are trashing the place."

"Very good. What else?"

"What do you mean, what else? That's it."

"Hmmph. Is that what Koizumi told you?"

I whipped my head towards him. He was staring thoughtfully, almost sadly, at the air in front of him.

"Well," he said. "Maybe you should think about whether or not he's hiding something from you there. You need to be careful. If you make the wrong move with something like this letter, Miss Suzumiya could put an end to the world. You haven't done anything that would make her think you either return or reject the feelings expressed in that letter?"

"I already told you."

"Good. Then the forgery has done no damage."

This guy had my attention now. "You know for a fact the letter is a forgery? Who forged it?"

"I thought you said you couldn't trust me?" Mishima smiled. "Now you're saying that if I just tell you that Koizumi and his organization forged that letter, you'll believe me?"

I grabbed him by the scarf. "Who forged the letter?!"

"You'd better let me go," he said in a low voice. "I don't want to cause a scene, but if my friends think you're going to hurt me, they _will_ make a move. Besides, no matter how much you threaten me, my answer is the same. Koizumi and his organization are behind this, whether you want to believe it or not."

"What I want to believe doesn't matter. Koizumi isn't stupid enough to have done something like that." But I let him go.

"You're right; he's not stupid. But do you really know what his goals are?" He shrugged and walked away. "Well, that's all for today. I'll let you do your own digging, find out for yourself just how much of what your 'friends' in the SOS Brigade tell you is the truth. Next time you see me, I think you'll be ready to hear some real answers."

I stood there and just watched him go for a minute.

What was that? This rival esper just comes up to me, tells me Haruhi's letter is a forgery, but acts like a classic villain type. Is he trying to use reverse psychology on me to make me think Haruhi really did write the letter? Did he write it himself, and that's how he knows about it? Or is he genuinely scared of what I'll do with Haruhi if I think that the letter is real?

_This is all way too confusing. Why can't this be like one of Koizumi's mystery games, where all the possible suspects are laid right out for you? For all I know, the culprit is someone I haven't even met yet._

I turned and headed home. When I got there, I found a limo waiting. Koizumi was inside.

We headed up to my room. My sister voiced some curiosity about Koizumi's presence, but I got her to give us some privacy by promising to play the homeless bum the next time her friend Miyokichi came over to do their make-believe horror TV series.

Once the door was securely closed, I asked Koizumi, "What did you find out?"

He sat on my bed and clasped his hands together. "I hope you really weren't expecting me to find out too much in just a few hours. My associates have checked up on the usual suspects and found nothing to link them to this. The investigation is ongoing; however, it is highly unlikely that anyone with access to esper knowledge of Miss Suzumiya's state of mind would attempt something like this. It risks upsetting our young goddess, and to what purpose?"

I folded my arms. "Maybe to fix me up with her."

He smiled. "Why would anyone want to do that?"

"I'm not in the mood for games. You're the one who's always trying to convince me to tell Haruhi 'I love you.'"

"We went over this yesterday, did we not?"

"Yeah, but a guy named Mishima just gave me some fresh food for thought."

Koizumi's eyes widened with alarm. "Goro Mishima? He approached you?"

"Yeah. He said I should think twice about whether what's happened to Haruhi because of this fake letter isn't exactly what you want. What's the deal with him, anyway?"

His eyes and mouth both narrowed into grim lines. "He is an esper working for an organization that wishes to exploit Miss Suzumiya's powers for their own ends. Worse, he's a backup agent, assigned to a different school from Miss Suzumiya in an effort to keep his nature secret from other agencies. Logically, he must have orders to transfer to North High if something happens to his organization's point man, and remain inconspicuous otherwise. If he approached you, that suggests a rogue faction has split off from his organization. That makes him very dangerous."

"You think he might try to harm Miss Asahina?"

"I don't mean dangerous in that way. Whatever his goal, he wouldn't benefit by hurting those close to Miss Suzumiya. But without knowing his goal, there's no way of knowing what he's up to. You shouldn't trust anything he says."

"I don't. But he has a point. Why should I trust the guy who's been telling me to confess love for Haruhi all along?"

"Perhaps you might consider that I only suggested you say that because I knew you wouldn't do it. Maybe I even knew that suggesting it would make you all the more resistant to the idea."

"You're trying to confuse me."

"On the contrary," he sat his hands on my bed and leaned back, looking at the ceiling, "...as always, I want to make it clear to you that you cannot trust any of us. Even supposing our relationships with you are genuine, we cannot put you over the fate of the world, or our own stake in the power Miss Suzumiya represents. That said, you need not trust me to believe me when I say that no one in the agency, save perhaps myself, would want you and Miss Suzumiya to start up a serious relationship."

Presumably by "serious relationship" he meant something more serious than last November's boyfriend/girlfriend experiment. "Don't want to lose your jobs, I take it."

"Precisely the opposite. Think for a moment. When have Miss Suzumiya's powers been at their most active?"

I put a hand to my chin. "Well, obviously when we were filming our movie was the big anime convention of Haruhi using her powers. After we had that fight and I made up with her, it was like we were filming the apocalypse..." I lowered my hand. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"Exactly." He gave a pleased nod. "Miss Suzumiya's powers are clearly stoked far more vigorously by positive emotions than by negative ones. We had no way of knowing this before you came along, since during her middle school years she never had any positive emotions strong enough to trigger her power. Most of us believed that finding the right boyfriend for her would make her more manageable. After what happened during the filming of the movie, however, it was almost unanimously decided that the safest course of action is to keep you close by Miss Suzumiya's side while preventing your relationship from becoming intimate. After all, if you simply making up with her makes her powers run amok, imagine what a confession of love would do."

"So I'm like a tumor on the heart. Dangerous, but you can't remove me without killing the patient."

"That is a fairly insightful analogy, but please don't think you do only harm. Incidents of closed space have dropped dramatically since you entered Miss Suzumiya's life. And most of my associates recognize that whenever a serious problem does occur with Miss Suzumiya, you are the only one who can solve it."

I shook my head. "I don't really care whether your associates think I'm good or bad for the world. The point is, there's no chance that any of them would forge a letter like this?"

"I find it hard to imagine. But, may I remind you that you still haven't shown me the letter?"

"Oh, right."

I dug it out of the desk drawer where I'd hidden it and handed it to Koizumi. He held it delicately, as though examining a piece of evidence, and read it with no emotions betrayed on his face.

After a minute he said, "Well, this almost completely rules out the possibility that someone in the agency could have written this."

"What do you mean?"

"The letter references your secret outing with Miss Asahina. I made no mention of that incident in any of my reports, and if there were unauthorized surveillance on the SOS Brigade during that time, I'd expect it to have been uncovered by now."

"And you wouldn't have done it yourself, because you know Haruhi and I better than that," I sighed.

"There is one possibility. The time travelers and extraterrestrials undoubtedly have surveillance methods which we cannot detect with our own primitive technology. A rogue agent might have learned about it from one of them."

_But in that case, why not suspect one of the time travelers or extraterrestrials who knew about it to begin with? __Damn__, now Koizumi's got me thinking like him._

"We can certainly agree on one thing," he said, still studying the letter. "Takuma, or indeed any ordinary human at North High, could not have done this. It's too good a forgery, and too versed on details that no one outside of the SOS Brigade is supposed to know."

"So maybe we need to start thinking about the SOS Brigade's enemies, like the ones who kidnapped Miss Asahina, or whoever attacked us at the snowy mansion."

"I assure you, we have already begun exploring those lines. However, it will take a considerable amount of time for us to get results. In the meantime, would you do me a favor?"

I regarded him with suspicion. "What is it?"

"Give some consideration to the possibility that Miss Suzumiya really did write this letter."

_See, this is why you should never agree to do someone a favor before they've told you what it is._ "No deal. She told me she didn't write it, and that's the end of it."

"She may have gotten cold feet. The letter itself says -"

"How would you feel if someone faked a love letter from you and not even your closest friends would believe you when you said you didn't write it?" I snapped.

He put the letter aside. "I'm not asking you to tell her your doubts to her face. Indeed, I would strongly advise against that. All I'm asking is that you remain attentive for any indication that Miss Suzumiya wrote the letter."

"Veto. I don't play your games."

Okay, to be honest, it was floating around in the back of my head that there was a slight chance, a _very slight _chance, that Haruhi might have actually written the letter under the influence of a sugar overdose or something. But that was all the more reason not to think about it. If I had written a love letter to Haruhi, put it in her shoe locker, and then belatedly recovered my sanity, I'd want her to believe me when I said I didn't write it, more than anything. No, even that is an understatement. Her not believing me would be on the same level as if I were drowning and she refused to let me onto the lifeboat.

And I had a hunch that Haruhi felt the same way. I had to believe her when she said she didn't write that letter. To not believe her would be outright cruel.

"Anyway, we have other things to deal with," I said, hoping to cut him off from arguing further. "We need to get our White Day plans firmed up."

"Ah, yes. But I believe we're actually on top of things as far as that goes." He took some papers out of his bag with a proud smile. "I've finished the script. Once the girls identify the thief, they can search his rented apartment for their White Day chocolates. If I may venture to boast -"

"Scrap it."

Koizumi looked struck to the heart. "What?"

"Or save it for another occasion. Haruhi isn't going to be impressed by yet another mystery game. We need something new."

"This is awful sudden, isn't it? You've known that I've been working on this for the past few weeks."

"You saw her today, didn't you?" I scrounged around for a notebook and pencil. "She's in a terrible mood. I can tell she's blaming that fake love letter on me. A disappointing White Day might be the straw that breaks the camel's back. If you want me to keep on cooperating with you and your agency, we've got to fix this." I started writing. "You're part of an ultra top secret organization, aren't you? It should be easy for us to come up with a spy mission for the girls."

Koizumi sighed. "Membership in the agency is my duty and birthright, as an esper. It's not my favorite pastime."

"Are you going to complain, or are you going to help?"

* * *

We managed to make some pretty good progress on the White Day scheme before Nagato arrived. I even contributed some ideas myself, though I'm not good at that sort of thing.

With Nagato on the scene, I became a sort of third wheel. She and Koizumi immediately started discussing methods of tracing the love letter's author, and while I'm sure they meant for me to benefit from knowing their plans (or at least, Nagato did), once they got into discussing the wave patterns created by the introduction of unfamiliar entity data into the domain of my shoe locker I lost track of where the conversation was going and even what the topic was.

Miss Asahina never showed. I hadn't gotten to inviting her, and I guess Nagato must have showed her usual initiative – in other words, no one told her to say anything to Miss Asahina, so she didn't. Thinking it over, though, it was probably best she didn't know the details about the letter. Koizumi really seemed to believe Haruhi might have written it, so Miss Asahina might believe that, too. I'd rather prove it was a hoax first, and avoid damaging any chance I might have of dating Miss Asahina.

I loaned Koizumi the letter so he could check it for fingerprints and other traces, and we all said goodnight.

* * *

The next morning I walked into classroom 1-5 to see Haruhi looking... If I didn't know better, I'd say troubled. She was staring very fixedly, very thoughtfully at my empty desk, while holding a pencil in her right fist and pulling it back and forth with her left hand.

"Hey," I said, taking my seat. "What's with you? Did the redecorating not go well?"

"It went fine." Her eyes narrowed at me in disapproval. "Didn't I tell you very clearly that I didn't write that letter to you?"

"Huh? Yeah, you did, and I believe you."

"Then what was _this_ doing in my shoe locker yesterday afternoon?"

She shoved a sheet of paper in my face. I read the writing on it, with increasing horror:

_Hey, Haruhi. I feel really stupid for writing this, but I don't know what else to do. Obviously I can't say any of this to your face._

_ You're right about my feelings, though I wish you didn't gloat about it. It almost makes writing this pointless._

_ But__ – __I'm glad you told me. There have definitely been times, like, oh, when you broke up with me, when I thought you didn't return my feelings. For a while I even thought that you couldn't fall in love, with anyone. I'm telling you straight up, you're not the easiest person to get along with, much less be in love with. But you've been getting better, and you telling me how you feel helps a lot. Even if you backed out on it at the last minute, and tried to blame it on Takuma. How dumb do you think I am, anyway, to believe he could have written something like that? I know your words when I read them._

_ Anyway, it doesn't matter, because I'd rather keep this secret anyway. For now, __I mean__. I'm not ready for that sort of relationship and apparently you aren't either. Besides, people will misunderstand. They'll think we're like one of those idiotic couples you see on TV, all blindly lovey-dovey to the exclusion of everything else, or denying their feelings for each other in a way that brain-dead viewers think is cute, no matter how bad it is for their mental well-being. We're better than that._

_ I know you usually don't care what I want, but one of these days I'm going to ask you out on a date, and until then, I'd rather we didn't talk about any of this to each other's faces. If you do, I'll just deny that I wrote this. __T__hen we'll be even._

_ But write me back if you want. And that White Day signal you want to see__ – __you'll see it._

_ I guess this isn't a very romantic letter. That makes me less afraid to put it in your locker. I just had to let you know. You turned my __grey__ boring life into a big adventure, and you understand things about me that no one else ever has, and I had to let you know._

_\- Kyon_


	3. Chapter 3

\- Chapter 3 -

"Look, I'm not mad," Haruhi said, her face softening. "I mean, yeah, it's pretty frustrating that you would do this after I very clearly told you that I didn't write that letter. But I'm not _mad_. In fact, I'm willing to help you get over this love thing."

_Oh, joy. Knowing how Haruhi's mind works, her methodology for curing my supposed lovesickness is thwacking me with a meterstick every time I look at her face. __Or maybe with a b__okken__._

I folded the letter up so that no one else might get a glimpse of it and set it down on her desk. "I didn't write this."

"It's in your handwriting."

"So was yours. I mean, the letter which I got was in your handwriting."

I had to admit, though, it was pretty convincing. If I didn't know better, from looking at it I'd swear I'd written it myself. Whoever had forged this was frighteningly good at his work.

And Haruhi, as usual, wasn't listening to me. "You don't have to be ashamed. It's not that bad of a love letter. It's crude and a bit clunky, but it's not nearly as stupid as the one that friend of yours had you give to Nagato."

"Very flattering, but I didn't write it."

"See, this is the one stupid part." She tapped the letter with her index finger in a mixture of thoughtfulness and disdain. "If you were planning to lie about having written this, you shouldn't have said right in the letter that you were going to lie about having written this."

"For the love of -" I stopped myself from raising my voice in frustration just in time, remembering that we weren't exactly alone. My face fell into my hands. "Will you just think for a minute? You don't honestly believe I'm in love with you, do you?"

There was a pause, just long enough to let my heart fill with the vain belief that Haruhi was actually listening to reason. "...Just a few weeks ago, I'd have thought it was a pretty ridiculous idea myself. I mean, I _know_ you. I think I'd have noticed if you felt that way. But I've been talking with some of the girls..."

_Oh, boy. Here we go._

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad that Haruhi has finally been making some real friends. Seeing her talking and smiling with other girls, acting like a healthy and well-adjusted human being, takes a huge weight off my shoulders. I much prefer seeing her have a good time with other people to listening to her talk about how bored and miserable she is. Plus, now Haruhi can turn to someone other than me when she expects a sympathetic ear for her complaints about what worthless idiots boys are; you can't put a price tag on that. But I was already learning that there's a bad side to her having female friends, too.

"They keep telling me that you're hung up on me. They say there's no other possible explanation for the way you let me drag you around everywhere and slave away at every order I give you. Of course I told them that it's your love for the SOS Brigade, not me, but they don't believe it. Yui says she wishes her boyfriend worked half as hard for her as you do for me."

_Oh right, like you leave me any choice._

"Of course, he probably would if she just gave him things to do, like I do for you. Which you never thank me for, by the way. So I usually laugh their suspicions off. But lately you keep on surprising me, like when you apologized for that prank call about Mikuru being kidnapped, or when you were so supportive about dealing with Yuki's family problems... and now there's this letter..."

Now there was something you didn't hear every day. Haruhi's voice was slowing down, weakening. I took my hands from my face and looked up. She was staring into the distance and now I could say she _definitely_ looked troubled.

"...I'm starting to think they may be right," she finished. She tipped the eraser of the pencil she was holding back to rest against her upper lip.

I was beginning to see the problem. Like I said before, Haruhi did have some sort of romantic inclination towards me. A little schoolgirl fantasy that she had the sense to keep under control, or maybe some twisted self-destructive impulse to pair herself, a lover of heroic adventure, with the least heroic guy she knew. Or most likely of all, she liked the whole idea of a completely subservient boyfriend. Whatever the case, she didn't intend to actually start a relationship with me, but the idea that I wanted to start up a relationship appealed to her. At least part of her had to realize that I couldn't have written that letter, that I would never screw with her like that, but another part of her wanted to believe I had written it. Haruhi wasn't a loving person by any stretch of the imagination, but she had a heart, and these phony love letters were pricking at it.

"Haruhi," I said. "I promise you, I didn't write that letter."

She looked at me, considering. "...Okay."

"And I promise, we're going to figure out who's writing these."

She looked surprised at the boldness with which I said that, but she nodded.

* * *

Looking back at it, it was strange. I mean, all I did was simply repeat what I'd already said, that I didn't write the letter, and Haruhi suddenly believed me. Or at least, she accepted that I wasn't going to own up to having written it. She hadn't argued like her usual stubborn self, or anything.

I really needed to put a stop to these letters. It was scary seeing Haruhi subdued like that. The sooner we got her back to normal, the better.

I found Koizumi again during lunch break. This time, I joined him for lunch.

"Any progress?" I asked, picking at what passed for food in North High's cafeteria. I had good reason to bring my lunch each day.

"None, save for the fact that there has been no progress." He was eating his food heartily, as though he had no cares whatsoever. "The only fingerprints on the letter were yours, Takuma's, and Miss Suzumiya's. Takuma never saw the face of the person who told him about the letter. The members of my organization all have alibis for the time the letter was planted. Every avenue we're looking into is coming up empty. May I ask you again to consider -"

"No. Haruhi didn't write that letter, and now I have proof." I slid the love letter Haruhi got across the table to him. "Haruhi found this in her shoe locker after yesterday's meeting."

He examined it. "Ah. Most interesting. We had anticipated something like this, which is why we set up surveillance around the shoe lockers as soon as you told me about the first letter."

"So either it was put there yesterday morning, between Haruhi arriving at school and my talking to you, or your people missed something."

"I see what you're getting at. You know you didn't write this letter, which means someone must have forged it. If someone forged it, it stands to reason that they forged the one from Miss Suzumiya as well." He shook his head. "However, there are two other possibilities. One, after you showed the letter to the Data Integration Thought Entity and the Agency, through myself and Miss Nagato, someone in one of those factions came up with the idea of forging a reciprocal letter. They may have decided that since Miss Suzumiya was apparently expressing her feelings for you, they had to show her that you return those feelings, or risk utter cataclysm as a consequence of Miss Suzumiya being a woman scorned. As the saying goes, Hell hath no fury."

"Damn..." This was getting way too complicated. I could barely wrap my head around the whole mystery, and I got the feeling I was going to really hate Koizumi's second theory.

He didn't disappoint me. "Two, both letters were created by Miss Suzumiya herself, the first with the normal tools of pencil, paper, and the feelings burning in her heart, and the second with her abilities. She wished for, even relied upon, you in some way returning her feelings. And so, the letter appeared in her locker."

"Aaaagh..." I groaned under my breath. Why did Haruhi have to be so much trouble? I wanted to repeat to Koizumi that she didn't write that letter, but I knew it didn't make a difference; like I realized when I talked to Haruhi that morning, just because she wasn't in love with me didn't mean she didn't want a reply letter from me. Haruhi believed in a lot of things, from time travelers to professional wrestlers, but fairness in love and war was not one of them. And even the "White Day signal" reference was vague enough that she might have guessed it without having seen the original letter.

"I don't suppose there's any chance you would be willing to let Miss Suzumiya believe that you did in fact write this letter?"

"And go through her entire program to cure me of my supposed love for her? No, thank you. Besides, I already told her I didn't."

"That's what I feared. Then, can you at least be extra-sensitive to her feelings for the next few days? If she wrote that letter -"

"For the hundredth time, she didn't."

"...or even if she didn't, this is a vulnerable time for her. We don't want to risk her falling into a state of depression. So no clandestine rendezvous with Miss Asahina, no questioning her life choices, and most importantly, plenty of that supportiveness and understanding that that first love letter referred to."

"Are you asking me, or ordering me?"

"Hmm. Did I word that so tactlessly? I'm asking you, of course."

Not that it mattered. I'd do it, but not for Koizumi. I knew from experience that seeing Haruhi depressed was like staring into the abyss: it was scary, and strange, and inexplicably gave you the feeling that life was meaningless.

"Alright, but you've got to find out who wrote that first letter. And make him, or her, or whatever tell us what the deal is with the second letter."

"We're trying, but there aren't many possibilities. I think you'll agree that there aren't any humanoid interfaces who both know Miss Suzumiya well enough and can imitate human mannerisms well enough to have written a letter like that."

That was something that hadn't occurred to me. It _was_ hard to imagine Nagato, who couldn't answer a question in a way that anyone other than an astrophysicist could understand, composing sentences like "Seriously, don't screw this up."

"Then there are the time travelers. The faction represented by Miss Asahina is dedicated to maintaining their present as it exists. Fabricating a romantic correspondence between you and Miss Suzumiya could only interfere with that present."

That was true. If a key part of Miss Asahina's future era was Haruhi and I being romantically involved (which was already a ridiculous idea on the face of it), Miss Asahina would have hinted something about that by now. ...Okay, maybe not. She did tend to tell me about her missions after they were finished, if at all. But how could phony love letters possibly do any good when Haruhi and I had both firmly decided we didn't like dating each other?

"There are other time traveler factions, of course, but our information on them is limited. All of those we know of would prefer to either neutralize Miss Suzumiya's power or acquire it for themselves. While we're still trying to trace their recent activities, it is hard to imagine how these letters could accomplish either goal. The same is true of the esper faction which opposes my own."

"What about the sliders?" I suggested.

He gave me a condescending smile. "There are no sliders."

"Like hell there aren't. I've heard Haruhi talk about them in the same breath as espers and time travelers more than once."

"So, you now believe Miss Suzumiya's actions to be perfectly consistent?"

I clearly wasn't going to get straight talk from him on this subject. "I'm going to talk to Nagato about all this too, you know."

"By all means. As I told you yesterday, you shouldn't trust any of us."

There was a silence as we ate. But Koizumi looked thoughtful, and after a moment he smiled again.

"You know, thinking it over, your suggestion of sliders is actually quite canny. If sliders did exist, they would be a very natural suspect, since they wouldn't even need to forge the letters."

"What do you mean?" I said through a mouthful.

"Well, if there are a myriad of alternate dimensions, branching off from every possible choice, then it stands to reason that there is at least one dimension where you and Miss Suzumiya have already written such letters. A slider could simply steal those letters from that dimension, then plant them in your shoe lockers in this dimension."

The mouthful I was eating went down the wrong pipe. I started coughing.

Over my coughing, Koizumi winked at me. "Of course, an analogous technique could be employed by time travelers, too."

* * *

My talk with Nagato went something like:

"Has your boss been investigating the espers? Is there any chance they wrote either of these letters?"

To the first question she nodded; to the second she said, "Very little."

I didn't ask her about sliders or time travelers.

* * *

Haruhi was still looking lost in thought that afternoon. Not depressed or troubled, but intensely thoughtful. Ordinarily that wouldn't bother me much; at worst it would mean the calm before one of her hare-brained schemes, and more commonly it just meant she was thinking things over. It was a cute look on her, to be honest. But under the circumstances, it was downright disturbing. I found myself wishing for once that she'd poke me in the back with her pencil and say something to me.

But she didn't say a word until class ended. Then she just took her bag and said, "See you at the meeting," not sparing me a glance. There was nothing cold or angry about it, though – it was like she just had other things on her mind.

I might have just followed her, but Taniguchi approached me. "Kyon, buddy, Suzumiya isn't mad at you because of that letter, is she?"

My eyes narrowed. "What do you know about that?" Taniguchi only called me "buddy" when he was up to something. And he had gone to the same middle school as Haruhi, so it wasn't much of a stretch to suppose he knew her handwriting...

"Whoa, whoa there, Kyon! I think half the school knows about it by now. It wasn't me who's been spreading the word, either." He folded his arms.

...Oh. I should have guessed Takuma would use this to try to dirty Haruhi's name. What a toad.

"In fact, you should be thanking me," Taniguchi continued, nose in the air. "I've been telling everyone who passes along that rumor that there's no way Suzumiya wrote a letter like that."

I felt more surprised than grateful. "Why'd you do that?"

"Hey, give me some credit. Sure, I don't know Suzumiya that well, but you don't have to know her that well to know she's never going to be the one to break the ice." He slapped a hand on my shoulder. "Face it, buddy, the only way you're going to get to hear Suzumiya confess her feelings for you is if you tell her yours first. You're gonna have to make the first move."

I pushed his hand off. "I don't have any feelings to tell her, and I definitely don't want to hear her confess feelings for me."

"Whatever. So, is Suzumiya mad at you, or what?"

"Yeah, but not because of the letter. What business is it of yours?"

"What, you think Suzumiya's mood doesn't affect me? I wish!" He shook his head. "Suzumiya throws everyone else's day into chaos and just doesn't care. You're the only one who can keep her under control."

"Let's not get dramatic," I sighed. "Haruhi has other friends besides me."

"That's just made it worse! Kyon, don't you realize what day it is this Monday?"

The terror of that day's approach came second in my thoughts only to the calamity of the phony love letters, but I wasn't going to let him know that. I fed him a neutral look.

"It's White Day, you idiot! Man, don't tell me you totally forgot you have to repay your SOS girls for that big treasure hunt!"

"Quiet down. I specifically told you not to mention that to anyone." I didn't care who knew about it myself, but Haruhi said she didn't want anyone to know and I saw no reason not to oblige her.

"If you don't give Suzumiya at least three times what you got, we're all in an even bigger pile of shit than I thought. Tell me you didn't forget!"

"I didn't forget. Now pipe the hell down."

He stuck an accusatory finger in my face, but at least he was down to a normal speaking voice. "This is something you couldn't understand, but some of us only got obligation chocolates on Valentine's Day."

_Gee, I wonder who you could be referring to._

"For people like, uh, them, White Day is their last chance of salvaging some romance out of the year. If they pay back some of their obligation chocolate with love chocolate, they have a chance of starting something."

_Or of convincing the girls at this school that you're totally creepy. The ones who don't already think that, that is._ "What does this have to do with Haruhi?"

"Man, do you really not know anything about girls?" He shook his head. "Here's how it works: Suzumiya gets pissed off with you. She complains about you to her friends, making you sound ten times worse than you actually are. The girls all sympathize with her and declare that men are pigs. Can you see how that might make it hard to get a girlfriend?"

It was getting on the time where Haruhi might come looking for me, so I decided to cut this short. "Okay. I'll handle it," I said, getting up from my desk.

"Thanks, buddy."

I made a mental note to ask Haruhi later if she had any idea who in her circle of friends Taniguchi had his heart set on. If he was staving off that rumor about her, the least she could do was put in a good word for him.

* * *

But as I walked towards the SOS Brigade clubroom, my encounter with Taniguchi continued to bother me. Maybe our suspicions had been going in the wrong direction entirely. I didn't think Taniguchi had actually forged those letters, but he had _motive_. Because he was an idiot, he had a motive.

That was what Koizumi and I had missed. The letters couldn't change my relationship with Haruhi, so why would anyone create them, we asked. Maybe what we should have been asking is, who would want Haruhi and me to be lovers and be dumb enough to think the letters could accomplish that?

I knocked on the clubroom door and was given permission to enter. Haruhi was at the computer, Koizumi had the chess board out, Nagato was reading, and Miss Asahina was serving tea. It was looking like an "ordinary" day for the SOS Brigade. Ordinarily I'd consider that a well-deserved break, but given the subdued mood Haruhi had been in all day, it would have been a relief to see her showing some energy and imagination.

I sat down to play with Koizumi, but my head wasn't in the game. The thought that Haruhi might actually be disappointed that I hadn't written that letter kept nagging at me. Regardless of her feelings for me, she loved drama, and secret love letters definitely qualified as drama. Maybe, by having not written such a letter, she felt that I'd let her down in the same way I'd let her down by not investigating her business with Shiro.

I was wasting time here.

"We have _got_ to get things ready for you-know-what," I muttered to Koizumi.

"Never fear. You may have sprung that change in plans on me at the last minute, but my people work quickly. The adventure will be ready on the day."

"No, I mean we've got to get _things_ ready."

He blinked. "You mean... But that will only take a few hours."

Discussing things further would risk the girls overhearing, and I'd had enough of wasting time anyway. I stood and walked over to Haruhi.

"Would it be all right if I left now? I still haven't finished with those important things I was working on yesterday."

"Don't you have all weekend for that?" she said absently.

"Yeah, but that would be cutting it close. I want to make sure I get everything done."

"Hmm. That's pretty conscientious, for you. Well, I don't have much for you to do here today anyway. You're excused."

I nodded, and reached for my coat and scarf.

Then I heard Haruhi mutter, "Not like you're ever any use when we are doing something, anyway."

I looked over my shoulder, but Haruhi's eyes were fixed on the computer monitor, and I couldn't tell from the expression on her face whether she had meant for me to overhear or not.

* * *

If I'm being at all mysterious about my reason for leaving the meeting early, I apologize. I just had a lot of shopping to do. More, quite frankly, than I would have been able to afford if I hadn't picked up some babysitting jobs the past couple weekends. Haruhi kept me on a tight budget. I couldn't believe I was going to take one of my rare surpluses and blow it on stuff for her.

But really, what choice did I have?

I could console myself with the thought that it wasn't just for Haruhi; it was for all the SOS girls, and of the three of them, Miss Asahina's response would be the most rewarding. But that would be disingenuous. Getting extravagant White Day gifts for Nagato and Miss Asahina was a nice idea, and they deserved it, but Haruhi was the reason I was doing this. It was an act of necessity, not gratitude or generosity or romance. Because let's face it, I was no Romeo.

Miss Asahina would be a more than adequate Juliet, though.

I got home with my arms full of shopping bags. After setting them down, I got out my phone.

"Hey, Koizumi. You ready to start making chocolate?"

* * *

"You do realize that Miss Suzumiya was not in earnest when she said that we had to give them thirty times what they gave us for Valentine's Day?" Koizumi prompted as he was whisking the ingredients in.

I was counting how many baking pans we had between the two of us. "Haruhi never jokes. No matter how insane the proposition, she's always serious."

"I don't mean that she was joking. Merely that while she would love for you to gift her thirty times what she gave you, she doesn't actually expect more than the customary three times."

"Well, I need to exceed her expectations for once. I'm on thin ice here."

"What do you mean?"

I gave him a look. "Have you already forgotten that grocery store fiasco? You're the one that said I needed to make an effort for Haruhi."

"To benefit your relationship, yes. I don't recall saying anything about thin ice." He smiled.

"Add it up. Constant disappointment at my SOS Brigade performance, capped off with the grocery store encounter and an intriguing letter signed in my name that I didn't actually write. If I don't turn things around quick, she's going to kick me out of the SOS Brigade." _And possibly ruin Taniguchi's chances of a happy White Day. Assuming he has at least one chance to begin with._

That only made Koizumi chuckle. "You can't actually believe that."

"She said it herself."

"A threat that she's made many times, and which you've never taken seriously before."

"It's different this time." I started greasing the pans with cooking spray. "It's like she's taken her second-to-last-straw, or... I don't know. I didn't think so at first, but for whatever reason, that grocery store thing really disappointed her."

"Pan, please." I put one on the counter next to him, and he started pouring. "So your decision to go completely overboard on this has nothing to do with those love letters?"

I frowned. "What are you getting at?"

"Heeeyyyy, are you baking?"

My sister had poked her head into the kitchen. Not unanticipated, but still annoying.

"We're making White Day chocolates," I told her. "They're not for you."

"Huh? But there's enough here for like a dozen girls!" I won't give my sister credit for much, but she is perceptive. "Are you a womanizer?"

Now that I don't care for. "Koizumi and I are making our chocolates together. A lot of girls gave him chocolate this Valentine's Day, but that doesn't make him a womanizer. Now get out so we can get some work done."

She got that look on her face that she gets whenever she's denied entry to anything. "But I can help out! I'm probably better at it than you guys are!"

"That's not the point. Making these is our responsibility."

"Let me at least check that you have the right ingredients. What do you have in here?" She stretched up to grasp the top of one of the bags.

I swatted her off of it. "Out," I ordered. "Don't bother your big brother while he's working."

She made that closed-mouth growl of hers and stormed off.

I returned to the counter to take the pan Koizumi filled, set it aside, and hand him another one.

He said, "I didn't say anything because I didn't want to meddle in your family affairs..."

_No, of course not. Just in my love life._

"...but I really don't think the girls would mind if they knew your sister had helped with the chocolate."

"Yeah, I'll bet they wouldn't. Haruhi would see it as one more proof that I can't do anything right for myself. She'd love waving that in my face." I shook my head. "Anyway, I got some stuff for my sister in there too, and even though she's already making me regret it, I'd rather not spoil the surprise if you don't mind."

"Of course. You do have a soft spot for her, don't you?"

"If you knew her back when she wasn't such a pain, you'd understand."

We set the chocolates aside to cool, and Koizumi insisted on digging out one of our old family board games while we waited. It was a part cooperative, part competitive game; we rolled dice and drew cards showing villains to fight.

Koizumi was about to roll for an attack when he got a phone call that he had to take in private. While I waited, my sister came back into the kitchen. "Are the chocolates ready yet?"

"No," I grunted. "I'll let you try one later. Now leave us alone."

Bribery never fails. She went back to her room to wait for her chocolate.

A minute later Koizumi returned. "I'm getting tired of asking this," I said. "But has there been any progress at all on who wrote those letters?"

"Ah, yes. It was Goro Mishima." He picked up the dice and rolled. "We can't identify the wave traces left in Miss Suzumiya's shoe locker, and the only discernible wave traces in yours are Takuma's and Miss Suzumiya's. Your information about a rogue faction of espers, however, gave us new possible motives and suspects. We showed Goro Mishima's photo to a few people, and confirmed that he gave the first letter to Takuma. We can't be sure of the second letter's origin, but since you know you didn't write it, I don't imagine you care about that. Apparently Mishima, confident the letter would have no impact on your relationship with Miss Suzumiya, was trying to sow distrust between you and my organization. Hence why he approached you, blaming the letter on me." He pushed the dice towards me. "Why the face?"

_Just like that, mystery solved?_ "Mishima says you wrote the letter. You say Mishima wrote the letter. Are you expecting me to take your word over his, just because you were lucky enough to have Haruhi choose you for the SOS Brigade?"

"Ah, you're learning." He leaned back, resting on one arm. "Indeed, my membership in the SOS Brigade represents a victory for my organization in the war surrounding Haruhi Suzumiya, and there is no rule that only the righteous ever triumph. Unfortunately, here's what it comes down to: Goro Mishima wrote that letter, but there is no way that I can prove it to you, and no way that you can confirm his guilt for yourself. Mishima's group are not the sort to leave clues that the average high school student could uncover."

"I could ask Nagato."

"By all means, do so. But she and I could easily be in cahoots." He shrugged. "For all you know, Mishima could be a member of my organization, playing the part of scapegoat after the letter ended up not having the intended effect. You have only his word and mine that this is not the case."

This was a real headache. "Now, wait a second. You said before that there was no way an esper group could have known about my secret meeting with Miss Asahina!"

"We have reason to believe Mishima has a time traveling confederate."

_Beautiful. Just beautiful. With my luck it's probably that sneering bastard Miss Asahina and I had a run-in with._

"My advice is to forget about it. Our surveillance around the shoe lockers ensures that if someone tries to leave another letter, he'll be caught. Unless our organization itself is the culprit." He smiled. "And I am hardly foolish enough to commit a crime in a way that would leave me as the sole suspect."

Once the chocolates had cooled and hardened, I let my sister have two. Koizumi and I each tried one too.

"Hmm." Koizumi made a vaguely dissatisfied face. "A bit gritty."

I nodded. "Well, that's why I got plenty of premade stuff, too. Our gift won't be a total disaster."

"I didn't say they're a disaster," he protested. "They're just not quite as smooth as store bought ones. The love we put into making them will more than make up the difference in the girls' eyes."

"Give me a break."

"Why, didn't you enjoy your Valentine's chocolates more because the girls made them for you?"

That, I couldn't deny.

"Besides, we have one more touch to add. Icing." He handed me a pastry bag.

_Hmm. The girls wrote words on theirs, but they had only two chocolates each to do, while I've got 45, not counting the store-bought ones. They'__ll__ understand if I just decorate them with hearts, circles, and squiggly lines, instead of painstakingly lettering 45 individual..._

The image of Haruhi with a disappointed scowl on her face surfaced in my mind like Godzilla rising up from the depths of the ocean.

_...Yeah, okay._ I sighed. _I'm tired out as it is, but it's really not worth getting kicked out of the SOS Brigade._

I squeezed out a different word on each one, rotating through the standbys like "affection", "thanks", "chocolate", and "happiness". Spread them out evenly among the three girls, and there'd be no risk of the words being perceived as a message of any kind. Ordinarily I'd take a chance and put something suggestive on Miss Asahina's, but with the mood Haruhi was in after getting that fake love letter, it was just too dangerous.

Koizumi was working on his own chocolates, but he paused to peer over at my work. "Hmm. If I may make a suggestion? Write 'partner' on one of Miss Suzumiya's."

"That's not funny."

"I'm quite serious."

I glared at him. "Weren't you the one who said this is a vulnerable time for her?"

"Of course." He returned to applying his icing, but he kept talking. "But didn't you say that you never showed Miss Suzumiya the letter? Since you are confident she didn't write it, that means she has no way of knowing that it ordered you to write 'partner'."

"What's the point, then?"

"While Mishima wrote the first letter, the second could still be a manifestation of Miss Suzumiya's power. If so, it is very dangerous to let this White Day pass without some small assurance that you return her feelings. Moreover..." He shrugged. "It may prompt her to recognize that you are her equal, and treat you as such. And I will, of course, regard it as a favor I owe you."

_Yeah, right. Haruhi's so stubborn, if she got into an argument with the SOS Brigade's four laptops and her cutting edge __desktop__, the five computers would all admit they were wrong before her. And you expect me to believe some icing on a chocolate disc is going to change her mind?_

Koizumi watched my expression. "Allow me to make things easier on you." He set down his pastry bag. "I'll excuse myself for five minutes, so you can express your feelings towards Miss Suzumiya however you choose, and seal the chocolates up in their box when you're finished. Provided you advise Miss Suzumiya not to open the box until she is back at home, no one but you and her will know whether you have written 'partner' or anything else."

He headed out the front door into the night air.

He didn't have me fooled. If he and his agency wanted to know what I wrote on Haruhi's White Day gifts, and I had no doubt in my mind that they did, then a sealed pastry box wouldn't stop them.

In fact, this only made me wonder once again if Koizumi wasn't behind that forged letter. The case he'd presented for his innocence was that the agency didn't want me and Haruhi to get romantically involved, and Koizumi expected that the letter wouldn't accomplish that anyway. But maybe the agency had figured out some way to take advantage of Haruhi's powers going wild, and if there were additional steps to the plan, like pressuring me to write "partner" on her White Day chocolate, then I could see him believing that it might actually work.

Still, I couldn't be sure. Especially not with plenty of other likely suspects. Why the hell did I have to go and promise Haruhi that I'd figure out who was forging these letters? Sure, if I could nail the culprit before White Day, then I wouldn't need to worry about how Haruhi might feel about my White Day present. For that matter, I wouldn't have to give her thirty times, because the feat of solving that mystery would be enough to guarantee me an honorary place in the SOS Brigade for the near future. But the reality was that none of the clues pointed to any suspects or eliminated any suspects, and my deduction skills left much to be desired.

As it was, I couldn't deny that it was just slightly possible that Haruhi _did_ write that first letter, which meant I couldn't risk disregarding its simple request. And like Koizumi said, if she didn't write it, the word would mean nothing to her, so what was the harm?

Wait. That wasn't quite true. I'd said to Haruhi in that private detective universe that we were partners forever, and even if that was nothing but a dream to her, the word might have lodged in her brain. I couldn't dismiss as coincidence her wearing a ponytail the morning after we were in closed space and I told her I liked how it looked. I couldn't imagine the word "partner" would trigger much of a reaction, but espers would know more about that, and if Koizumi or Mishima or some other faction had forged that letter, then you could bet the house they had a damn good reason for telling me to write "partner". They were manipulating Haruhi, and if I did as the letter said, I'd be helping them do it.

But as unlikely as it was, the possibility that Haruhi really had written the letter was what I most needed to be concerned about. Because if she had, then writing "partner" would be telling her that I didn't believe her when she said that she didn't write the letter. And that would be betraying her in the worst possible way. It would be breaking the trust between us. It would be absolutely criminal hypocrisy, given how she'd trusted me about the letter in her shoe locker. She might well never speak to me again, and I wouldn't blame her.

I wouldn't play the stupid games of Haruhi's handlers. If she said she didn't write the letter, then as far as I was concerned, she didn't.

Still... Koizumi had a valid concern about the second letter. Maybe I would throw in something unique into her pile of chocolates. Something that would make her feel good about herself without seeming like it could be a romantic signal of any sort.

I carefully wrote on one disc: "Chief".

* * *

**Author's notes:** I love it when the characters seize control of the story. My plan was for Kyon to write "Partner" as the letter prescribed. As I was writing the climactic scene, Kyon outright refused to do that.

Another change in plans: Shortly after posting the first chapter I got an idea for an epilogue. No matter how I looked at it, it was definitely an epilogue, not an extension of the final chapter nor a short follow-up fic. Then the epilogue tripled in size when I realized that the scene which actually takes place on White Day should be in the epilogue instead of at the end of chapter 3. I'll be putting that up in ten days.

As mentioned in my notes for chapter 1, the ending was also changed. My original plot was that Koizumi had forged the letters. On later reflection I realized that while this wasn't impossible, it would be an uncharacteristically foolish move on Koizumi's part unless there were additional layers to the plan. After playing with a couple of other possible explanations for the letter, I decided an ambiguous ending was best. I avoid ambiguous endings as a rule because often they are nothing more than cop-outs. But in this case, I felt the reader should be allowed to decide for themselves who wrote the letter, or more specifically, whether or not Haruhi wrote it. Having Kyon discover that Haruhi really wrote it would be taking their relationship a step too far for this point in the chronology, and revealing that it was forged would prevent the reader from considering the possibility she wrote it. Plus, I have a fully formed idea of who wrote the letter and why, so the ending is at least not a cop-out, though I realize it might come off that way. Let me know what you think.


	4. Epilogue

\- Epilogue -

"They've entered the building."

Koizumi and I turned away from our card game to join the head of security by the camera monitors. We saw that Haruhi, Nagato, and Miss Asahina were indeed standing just inside the bank's entrance, surveying the floor. (Yeah, Koizumi just happens to have a bank executive for a second cousin.) They were all dressed in winter coats and wide-brimmed hats. Nagato had on a long-haired wig, and Haruhi a pair of sunglasses. Hardly inconspicuous, but it was their game, so I suppose I had to let them play it however Haruhi wanted.

There was no line, so they headed right for the open teller, en masse. Yeah, real top secret there, Haruhi. Three people doing a bank transaction together, nope, nothing unusual about that.

We couldn't hear what Haruhi said to the teller (audio surveillance at a bank is a big no-no, apparently), but if the three of them had correctly decoded the letter which we'd split into three parts and mailed to each of them, then she was telling him they were making a withdrawal from the Overload account. As she said it, she pushed the sunglasses down her nose and looked over the lenses in what she probably thought was a cool pose. If I were subjected to torture, I'd probably have to admit that she was right.

The teller went into a back room and came back with a medium-sized package. I cherished the look of disappointment on Haruhi and Miss Asahina's faces; they probably thought the package contained their White Day presents. They were in for a surprise.

I expected them to open the package the second they got to a private place. Instead, Haruhi furiously tore it open right at the counter.

I would have face palmed if I weren't watching for the girls' reaction to the package's contents. "She's the worst spy in the world."

Koizumi chuckled. "You're taking this much too seriously. This is merely a treasure hunt game, and Miss Suzumiya is conscious of that fact."

"The game would be more fun if she'd pretend it were real, not a parody movie."

Haruhi fell back half a step, but her expression was frustratingly unreadable through the sunglasses. Nagato was rock steady, as if she could tell what was inside the package without it being opened. Miss Asahina's reaction was more satisfying; she blinked prettily, and her mouth opened into an adorable "o".

Sitting atop the shredded packaging was a laptop computer. My laptop, if you must know, but we could just as well have used Koizumi's.

"Not true," he had insisted when we discussed the plan days earlier. "She needs to figure out the laptop's password if she is to access the data pointing the way to the treasure."

"So we'll tape a clue written in backwards letters onto the laptop," I returned.

"A fine idea, but now that the matter has come up I would like to prove my point: Miss Suzumiya can guess your laptop's password without any clues."

"How's she even going to know it's my laptop?" Neither Koizumi nor I were the sort to wallpaper our laptops with stickers. "Whatever. Go ahead. When she can't guess it, we can just have another spy drop by with the clue and tell her he delivered it at great peril."

"Another fine idea."

I got the sense Koizumi knew that his smiling endorsement of my suggestions annoyed the hell out of me. But I was getting payback now: After booting up my laptop, Haruhi took off her sunglasses, stared blankly at the password screen, and proceeded to push a bunch of random keys. For a second I felt afraid that her supernatural intuition would allow her to randomly type out the correct password, but she gave an exasperated huff and handed the laptop over to Nagato to figure out. She blinked at the screen for a second, then started typing away.

"If Nagato solves it for her, that still makes you wrong," I said to Koizumi.

"I don't believe she will. Look at what she's typing."

I squinted at the video monitor. _Oh, good grief. She's guessing passwords systematically. "aaaaaaa", "aaaaaaA", "aaaaaab"... She's going to lock the thing up that way!_

Apparently Haruhi had the same thought, because she seized the computer from Nagato with a cry of alarm. She handed it to Miss Asahina for her to try, looking at Nagato as though baffled by her lack of password sense. I was a little puzzled at it myself. Maybe Nagato was so perfect at entering passwords that she'd never encountered password attempt limits before?

Miss Asahina looked at the screen, hesitantly holding a single index finger out over the keyboard while Haruhi frowned, deep in thought.

I nodded. "Time to send in the clue."

Suddenly, Haruhi's face lit up and she made an exclamation of some sort. She pushed Miss Asahina out of the way and typed something in.

"Oh, no way," I gaped. She'd logged in. _I'm going to have to seriously rethink how I come up with my passwords. Given how snoopy she is, it's just dumb luck Haruhi hasn't broken into my laptop before._

As soon as the operating system loaded up, a program popped up with the message "Good morning agents Nagato, Asahina, and Suzumiya." (I'd pointed out to Koizumi that due to school, the girls wouldn't reach this part of the hunt until afternoon, but he said the "good morning" greeting was traditional or something.) The Computer Research Society had coded it up for us. I'm sure Koizumi had people who could have done it, but I'd rather not use them unless necessary; even Haruhi is bound to get suspicious of all Koizumi's affluent relatives at some point. And the Computer Society were happy to help when we explained things to them. As far as they were concerned, anything that made Nagato happy – and distracted Haruhi from harassing them – was worth subjecting their talents to our orders for a few hours.

Other customers were coming into the bank, so after a few moments of uncomfortable squirming, the teller mustered the fortitude to politely shoo the girls away from the counter. Thus, we could no longer watch them through the security cameras, and would miss out on their tackling the program's mapping puzzle.

Not that I minded. I had no doubt they'd solve it. Haruhi could probably tackle it single-handed, and if not, Nagato was there to do her rapid data processing thing.

Koizumi handed my coat to me. "Shall we head to the reception area?"

A limo took us, and the White Day parcel, to the "reception area" - the park where we had shot some of the footage for the SOS Brigade's film. I figured Haruhi could do the least damage in an open area, though Koizumi didn't think that a concern.

When we got out, Koizumi handed the parcel to me. There were three boxes, bound together with string.

"You take them," I said. If someone was going to get drop-kicked by Haruhi, I was resolved that it wasn't going to be me.

"I'm afraid it's not that simple. Miss Suzumiya has a tendency to latch on to simple associations. If I'm holding the boxes when the girls arrive, she is likely to conclude that I am chiefly responsible for their White Day presents."

"All the more reason why I shouldn't hold it. The last thing I want is to give her the idea that I really wrote that letter in her shoe locker. Besides, you look like the villain from a spy movie a lot more than I do."

He scratched the side of his face with one finger. "Did you not tell me that the whole point of making so much chocolate, and designing such an elaborate hunt for it, was to demonstrate to Miss Suzumiya your enthusiasm for the SOS Brigade, and thereby prevent her from kicking you out?"

"I'm having second thoughts." I looked at the massive parcel with trepidation. Did I really want to sign my name to a big gesture like this? Sure, any reasonable person could see there was nothing romantic about it. When a White Day gift is a response to a non-romantic Valentine's Day gift, then the White Day gift is obviously non-romantic too. But Haruhi wasn't a reasonable person. "Can't you hold it, and then just tell her later about how helpful I was with brainstorming ideas and -"

"Don't move!" a voice cracked into the quiet of the near-deserted park. I whipped my head around to see Haruhi, flanked by Nagato and Miss Asahina, who were each leveling one of the prop guns we'd used for the movie. "Put down the doomsday device, very slowly."

_Mind explaining how you're supposed to both follow that order and not move?_ But Koizumi set the boxes down as she ordered.

"Now, turn around! And... Hop on one foot while sticking a finger up your nose!"

_Yeah, no._

"Well done, SOS agents," Koizumi said. "But the game is not over yet, for there is one element you've -"

"Can we stop the roleplay now?" I sighed. "Please?"

"Hmmph." Haruhi folded her arms. "Poophead. You've got no heart, you know that?"

_Sorry, but I'm a little old now to enjoy playing "pretend"._

Miss Asahina sagged with relief, letting her pistol point to the ground. Nagato just kept hers steadily trained on me and Koizumi, apparently not having picked up the cues. I waved her down with a gesture.

Instead, she fired off two pellets. One hit Koizumi in the chest, I think where his heart is (I'm not good at anatomy), and one hit me right in the forehead, making me blink.

"No heart. Poophead," Nagato said in a monotone, while Haruhi and Miss Asahina burst out laughing.

_I'm glad you're all so easily amused._

When they recovered from their laughter, the girls approached to collect their prize.

"Huh," Haruhi remarked. "Why did you put them in such big boxes?" Koizumi nudged me at that. I ignored him.

The girls opened up their gifts. Miss Asahina gave an adorable little gasp. Nagato blinked. Haruhi just... stared. She looked like she'd found a wad of someone else's cash inside her shoe.

"You'd better enjoy them," I grumbled. "It took us all day to do the homemade ones, and now I'm broke to boot."

"Uh?" Miss Asahina croaked out, looking at me with horror.

_Dammit. I forgot for a moment that her and Nagato are here too._ "Well, uh... that's an exaggeration, of course," I said, forcing a grin and scratching the back of my head. "I just really hope you're all happy with them."

"We both do," Koizumi added. "While I admit that Kyon was the one pushing the project forward every step of the way, we both put all we had into making your White Day the best we could. It is the least you three deserve."

"Hmm." Haruhi seemed like she was trying out her mouth after getting out of dental surgery. "Well, it was a pretty exciting mission you put together."

"Hey, wait a second." I frowned. "How did you solve the mapping puzzle and get over here so quickly?"

"We didn't," Miss Asahina smiled. "Miss Nagato spotted your limo, and we followed you here."

On foot? Wait, the traffic was pretty heavy, wasn't it. I was too busy thinking about the end of the hunt to pay much attention to it. "Isn't that cheating?"

"I don't think so," Koizumi remarked. "It seems like the sort of thing real spies would do."

_Seems like a waste of the mapping puzzle, though. Oh well, maybe they'll solve it later, for the fun of it. It's not like I designed that part, anyway._

"These don't look too bad, for something Kyon worked on." Haruhi still sounded like she was struggling for words. She picked one of the chocolates up to examine it. "I half-expected them to be crumbling in the -"

She froze, looking down into the box. Out of curiosity, I leaned over to look inside.

For a moment, my mind went completely inert. There was no obvious reason why it would reduce her to silence, but the chocolate she'd picked up had exposed one in the layer below it, and that chocolate was the one which said "Chief".

_That has to be a coincidence, right?_

* * *

Tuesday morning. The day after White Day. I hadn't slept too well, and the walk up the hill only made me feel more sluggish. But I had to face Haruhi, so I did my best to stay upright and keep moving towards class at a steady pace.

She was seated at her desk, and she looked okay. I wouldn't go so far as to call it her usual self, but she wasn't troubled like she had been before.

"Yo," I said, taking my seat. "Am I still in danger of being kicked out of the SOS Brigade?"

"Huh?" Her eyes widened at me. "Is that why you did so much for White Day?"

"Well, of course. You said it was an SOS Brigade project. So I had to put some effort into it if I wanted to stay in the Brigade, right? You said you were thinking of kicking me out."

"Hmm. I see." She smiled, not her usual smile, but a bemused smile like someone finding humor in their own mistake. Or maybe in _my_ mistake. "And that's why you wrote 'chief' on that one chocolate, huh. Yeah, you're safe for now. But don't rest on your laurels! An SOS Brigade member should be putting out that kind of effort every day. I know that you can do a lot better than you've been doing."

"Yeah, sure." So long as I wasn't getting kicked out of the group, I wasn't going to worry about the rest for now. "So listen. I think I understand now why you told me not to say anything to other people about my Valentine's Day present. Do you think you could keep quiet about what you got for White Day?"

"Sure."

"It's really important. Especially right after we got those letters... people would misunderstand."

"I said I'll keep quiet about it. Don't you ever listen?"

_Talk about the pot calling the kettle black..._ "One other thing..."

"Boy, you're talkative today." She rested the side of her face in her hand, looking bored. "Did it not occur to you that I might have something I wanted to talk about, too?"

"I just need to ask you this before it's too late. I've listened to you ramble on about one ridiculous thing after another plenty of times."

"Uuuugh," she sighed.

I took that as approval to go ahead. "So apparently Taniguchi wants to date one of your friends..."

"Who?"

"I was hoping you could tell me. She got him some obligation chocolate for Valentine's Day, if that helps."

"No, I mean, who's Taniguchi?"

_Good grief._ "Tall guy, sits right over there. He went to your middle school. You agreed to a date with him, then broke up with him five minutes later." _I think. Taniguchi never actually confirmed that._

"Doesn't ring a bell."

"I usually have lunch with him."

She raised an eyebrow. "You think I pay attention to who you have lunch with?"

This was getting exasperating. "He was on the SOS Brigade's baseball team. He played one of Nagato's mind-controlled henchmen in our film."

"I don't memorize the names and faces of every participant in the SOS Brigade's projects." She turned her head to the window. "Anyway, never mind. He wants to date one of my friends. What is it you want from me?"

"Forget it." If she couldn't even remember who Taniguchi was, she couldn't put in a good word for him, especially since she wouldn't even know which of her friends he was interested in. Sorry, Taniguchi. I gave it my best shot. "What is it you wanted to talk about?"

"...There's no time for that now," she grumbled. "Class is about to start."

I turned my head and saw that Mr. Okabe had indeed come in. It made me feel a little bad that I hadn't given Haruhi a chance to say whatever she wanted to say when she first brought it up. Oh well. She could always tell me later. I could look forward to being stabbed in the back with a pencil today.

I'd thought of asking her about the way she reacted when she saw the chocolate with "chief" written on it. But if my worst fears were true – that she'd been disappointed it didn't say "partner" – she would be in a much worse mood right now. That being the case, I could live without knowing the answer.

Besides, there was always going to be a little bit of Haruhi that remained a mystery.

END


End file.
